Coffee, Castles and Carnage

My drive-by view of Edinburgh Castle

I’ve loved movies since I cried during Follow That Bird and my Dad took me to My Left Foot and called it research.

Whether it’s at home with a bowl of burnt popcorn, or in a plush seat at the theatre, I don’t talk during the film and I watch to the end of the credits.

And for the record, I didn’t ask for my money back because The Artist is a silent film.

My most recent movie date with Sarge was Carnage, before a coffee and a successful book trade with a friend.

I snapped some photos, and drove backwards over some cobbles on the way to cheesy nachos and an early evening showing.  My kind of Sunday.

I’ve loved Kate Winslet since Sense and Sensibility, and Jodie Foster since Nell.  Jodie Foster’s most recent character is considerably less zen than Nell.  I kept waiting for her to burst a blood vessel.

After the film, we somewhat reluctantly switched on our mobiles.

Sarge had four missed calls from work.  On a Sunday.  The next call he got sent him into the office.  Somewhere in the world, a computer exploded.  On a Sunday.    And I found myself looking to dump Sarge’s phone into the nearest vase of tulips.

The Lost Day (Or Two)

I went to a New Year’s Eve party with shotguns taped to my chair.  They were plastic. The party was post-apocalyptic.  Because, y’know, the world is supposed to end in this year.  Depending on whom you speak to.  I think we’re good. Even better now that I know what day it is.

You see, I lost a day or two back there.  I know I’m not the only one.  Happy New Year, folks.  I hope you’re caught up, too.

Even though New Year’s Eve saw my last pint of cider for a while, we still rolled home at about 4 in the morning.  Just in time to see a half-naked, badly tanned man stagger out of the lift and have a complete stranger declare me Queen from the stairwell.

The rest of the journey to the flat was relatively uneventful.  I transferred out of the chair with my guns still in place and everyone said good morning at 3 the next afternoon.

By the time I had my Annual New Year’s Day Cry, ripped the guns off and bumped into some coffee, it was time to go to Sarge’s parents’ for dinner.  On the way out, we met a girl tottering on her heels and weaving out the front door.  Good times?

Now.  It was dark when we got home and dark when we went out for round two.  I was confused.

‘I’m confused’, I said to Sarge and our friend.  I knew a day had passed somewhere, but WHERE did it go?  And HOW did I miss it?

‘I’m very disconcerted,’ I said. ‘We haven’t seen daylight today.  Are you sure it’s gone?  This is some trippy shit.  Is this the Apocalypse?’

And I wasn’t even hung-over.

But I did lose the power of speech sometime after dinner.  We came home, and I was saved by Saving Grace.  We woke up the next afternoon.

‘It’s Groundhog Day’, I said.

No, it’s New Year.  Again.

And so, Happy New Year, again.  Since it’s kind of happened twice for me, I have decided it will be extra awesome.

And I hope it is for you, too.

It's Groundhog Day. It is. It isn't. Image via Wikipedia

Got Glue?

Image via Wikipedia

Well.  It happened.  I called both my parents and told them before they read it online.  My friends can’t believe it’s actually true.  And we weren’t even drunk.

As per a new tradition, Sarge and I met for coffee after work on Tuesday.  We were on our way to dinner when the world went from just under the speed limit to slow motion.  I came off a curb-cut/ramp, and the front wheel caught in a rut or on a piece of gravel or something.  The chair stopped.  I didn’t.

I stuck my arms out and more than mumbled ‘Whoa!’ as the pavement got closer to my head, which I turned to save my nose and my teeth.  This is where being taught how to fall at the age of five came in handy.  One of the lenses from my glasses was on the ground.  The other was in my eyebrow.

Did I mention I was in the street?  And Sarge was more concerned than I was?  And a car stopped and two strangers got out?  And one of them, shall we say, forcibly suggested her friend call an ambulance?  I checked my teeth and my nose, and said I was fine.  Turned around and got in the chair, realising I was bleeding all over my butterfly bag.  In the two minutes all of this took, we were surrounded by mall-cops, who again suggested an ambulance.  One of the women gave the bits of my glasses back to Sarge saying, ‘They’re broken.’  At this point I knew there was nothing seriously wrong with me, because I thought, well, gee.  Ya think?

It took five people to wrap my head so the gauze would stay in place.  One guy thought I’d need butterfly stitches.  How appropriate!

When I soaked through the fourth pad of gauze, I agreed to go to the hospital, and I let the mall-cops tick a box and call an ambulance for me.  Sarge looked paler than I did.

Someone asked how old I was.  ‘Twent…thirty,’ I said.  Everyone looked at me.  ‘It’s not the knock, it’s just the first time I’ve said it out loud.’  People accepted this and soon an EMT was asking me the same question.

I was lifted into the ambulance on something that reminded me of an in-flight chair.  ‘What time’s the plane, boys?’ I asked.

Sarge lifted my chair in and there was no place to put it but on a stretcher.  It was buckled while Bill the EMT took my BP and pulse.

‘Will you take his, please?’ I asked as Sarge sat down next to me.

I was asked a bunch of questions and made some jokes and I saw that Bill tapped ‘Uneventful journey’ into his computer.

‘Does that mean I’m boring, Bill?’

I’ve never been so happy to be dull.

‘How are you?’

‘OK, except I have to pee.’

And so we checked in via the toilet.  We got up to the desk.   There was an American woman there before me.  She thought she’d taken too many travel-sickness tablets.

We waited. And waited.  And waited.  I didn’t feel like reading, and I didn’t have my glasses, so I tried to sleep on Sarge’s shoulder.  I kept saying ‘I must be next,’ and then switched to ‘can we just go home?’  The gauze kept slipping, and by the time my name was called four hours later, it had popped off altogether.

My nurse’s name was Karen.  This made me feel better.  Then Karen said, ‘I can see the end of the cuts, we can glue them.’  No stitches?  She went away again.

‘I waited four hours for glue?  I almost want stitches,’ I said to Sarge.

Karen cleaned me up and glued my head shut, and I thought again how lucky it was that I only broke my glasses, and the cuts didn’t inch further into my eye.  Thank you, Karen.

We got home at midnight, with tape strips and fish and chips.

I went to work the next day with the beginnings of a black eye and my old glasses.

30!

Nine To Thirty

There are nine days until my 30th birthday.  In light of these single digit days, I have revamped my 29 list:

Call Embassy if passport doesn’t appear.

Write blog posts that aren’t lists.

Outline new projects.

Read my 20th book of the year, and possibly more.

Pop my ear.  My cold from last week has moved into my right ear.  Never has the phrase ‘blow it out your ear’ meant so much.

Watch people bake Cakes for Japan, Edinburgh – Tsunami Appeal Fundraiser.

How To Have A Really Bad Cold

I’ve never been a good stuffed up person.  I’ve never liked taking naps, ask my parents.  The last time I slept during the during the day, I’d had all my wisdom teeth out the day before.

Last week, my body was gearing up for my annual cold, and this week it has lashed out.

While I had a towel over my head just above hot water this afternoon, I put together a list of things to do when you don’t do colds:

1. Have your partner/friends bring you cold medicine/cheesecake/tiramisu, without asking them.

2. Call your Dad and say: I have a code in my noeds, and laugh until you lose what little voice you have left.

3. Camp out on the couch, and pretend your Grandma is sitting on the other end of it and your Nana is making you chicken soup in your kitchen.

4. Ration your TV watching, but always make time to watch people yell at other people.

5. Put vanilla essence in your tea, and socks on your feet.  The uglier the better.

6. Listen to your go-to music (for me that would be country).  If you cry at the sad songs, blame the cold.

7. Read entire books in four-hour jags.

8. Look forward to times you won’t have a cold.  Do little things on your to-do list, so you don’t feel like a waster.

9. Take a stroll to shake off the cobwebs.  Thank you, gale-force winds.

10. Take funny photos to cheer yourself up.

The State Of My Head

Some of you may remember my quest to get back to my natural hair colour before I turn 30…next month.

I went shopping yesterday, something I don’t do very often.  My roots/fake colour in a full-length mirror was a scary sight to behold.  My nick-name lately has been Two-Tone Tessie.  On the way home, I bought some magic in a box.

I used it this morning to ‘blend my roots’.  They blended quite nicely as I watched Judge Judy for half an hour, while trying to keep the gunk on head and the towel on my shoulders.  I apparently can do neither of these things without a general look of mock disdain on my face.

I don’t have any during/blackmail photos, but here is the After shot.  First one off my webcam, too.  Sorry about that.  My camera insisted on taking arty shots of my hand and the floor.  Which is possibly another post.

New/old hair. And butterflies. And penguins and books. And a lava lamp.

Hello, My Name Is Lorna. I Have Piles.

I have a confession to make.  I have piles.  Giant piles.  Really annoying piles.  There’s one in the kitchen, one in the bedroom, and several in the office.

I spent a good part of last week organising the flat, and this task has spilled into this week.  Because I rewarded myself with an eyebrow wax (well, both eyebrows, I don’t like to be uneven) and a trip to Starbucks on Friday.

With the help of my new people, several black bags and colour-coded folders, I have tackled my bathroom, my closet, both dressers and the office.  Every time I do this, it’s like I’ve been shopping for clothes and other groovy things I forgot I had.  Groovy things like pens and bookmarks, and my old passport.  Yesterday I found a rubber chicken in the office.  Sarge says it’s actually yet another bookmark.  He also says he should sort out ‘his half’ of the rooms, because it looks like the cyclone stopped short.

Going through this process, I’ve learned a few things:

1.        Black bags are my friends.

2.       There’s a couch in the office.

3.       I don’t need new clothes.

4.       I like being organised.

5.       Sarge’s ‘epic detritus’ sounds so much more eloquent than my ‘buncha crap.’

 

The unearthed rubber chicken.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m not going to show you my new, tamer purple and blue piles.  Nobody wants to see those.

My Island Diaries

Tuesday 28^th December 2010

We say we’ll be on the road by 10.00.  It is noon before we set off.  I am wedged in the backseat between some bags, two tires and Sarge.  By 3.00, I have lost feeling in my ass.  I find it again when twisting to take photos through the windows.

My father has never been good at time-keeping.  The fact that he has his own time zone is part of his charm.  We always get where we’re going though, and rolled onto our first ferry of the day with ten minutes to spare.  We were actually early for the second ferry, one of the two cars on board.

It takes us about an hour to find the cottage in the dark, perched on the egde of Sarge’s GPS.

Anne getting out of the car and guiding my father’s driving with the light from her mobile phone added to the adventure.

So did needing to pee.

Wednesday 29^th

Sarge is out looking for wildlife and I am watching Dad attempt to make pancakes without a Teflon pan.  We have cereal and make a list of things to get at the one shop on the island, which also serves as the post office.

Dad and Anne venture out, list in hand, leaving me and Sarge to pretend we live here.  We curl up on the couch, and start to read books found on the well-stocked bookshelves.  I promptly fall asleep.

I wake up and the light through the windows has made shadows on the walls.

‘How long have I been asleep?’

‘About five pages.’

I love how my boyfriend measures time.

Friday 31^st

I am watching Sarge make porridge.  Dad and Anne have gone to Portree to find relief for Dad’s untimely toothache.  As Sarge explores the cupboards, I am pretending that we live here again.

Last night was whisky and music and laughs and a poker game, played for chips.  And bacon rolls and Clementine oranges.  I spent quite a few of my growing up years in house on a farm with a kitchen not unlike this one.  If I close my eyes at just the right moment, in just the right breath, these walls and this air feels just like home.

I went to bed last night and dreamt of inviting our friends up here for New Year.

And so, today.  We are left to drink coffee and read books and eat pate.

I started the fourth Harry Potter this morning, and Sarge is on The Odyssey.  After 200 pages for me, and 30 for Sarge, I look up and remark that the pate looks like petrified meat.  Funny, considering that’s exactly what it is.

Dad and Anne returned from the sea with penicillin and popcorn and more booze for the night’s festivities.  Which will begin in two hours when they wake up from a snooze.  Ferry journeys are a tiring business.

We are left with a fire to stoke and dinner on the stove.  My first text to arrive in days beeped through at 6.30.  It was Anne, saying they’d be home by 5.  Now we know.  Time slows and stops on islands such as this.

At the midnight bells, I think of my past and my future and how the two might mingle and meet.  I listen to Auld Lang Syne and Sarge’s heart, twirling my grandmother’s sapphire ring, on my finger since I was 13.  And I am happier than I have ever been.

Saturday 1^st January 2011

Another reading day today.  Also watching birds investigate birdseed on the fence.  So are they.  The house-phone rings and we first wonder where it is, and then who would be phoning us.

It was the couple in the next cottage inviting us over for mulled wine.  Bundling up, we took the long trek next door.  We were welcomed with the promised mulled wine and actual roasted chestnuts.  There was also wonderful conversation swirling around like the embers of the outdoor fire we crowded around.

My camera hasn’t been one foot away from me this entire trip.  I regretted leaving it at our cottage when people began lighting paper lanterns and starting a race in the sky.  I made a wish on one, as it floated higher and higher.  The last to disappear.

And I am writing this as Sarge makes dinner for the four of us.    I’m still in my coat and scarf.  Fire and hope is still all around me, even in my nose.  And I’m scribbling this evening’s moments so I don’t forget them.  Somehow I don’t think I ever will.

Sunday 2^nd January

Sarge went for a walk to the lighthouse today.  Brought me back a bluepurplewhite shell.  And I don’t want to go home.

We all pile in the car and drive up Calum’s Road.  Looking out the window, I start to cry.  And I have a moment like the one I experienced while lighting a candle in the Duomo in Florence.  But as much as I love stained glass windows, God isn’t one old bearded man haunting old buildings.  God is the air and the mountains and the sunset.  God is all my good memories and my Grandparents.  God is everyone’s good memories and everyone’s grandparents.  God is sitting in the car listening to epic movie soundtracks and crying because life is beautiful.  God is on holiday.

Monday 3^rd January

PJ day today.  I finish the fourth Harry Potter while Sarge got further through The Odyssey and Dad and Anne snoozed in the living room.  We had pancakes for dinner and I asked Dad to retell some family stories.  One last poker game during this Island trip gives me a new nickname, Four Aces.

Tuesday 4^th January

After last night’s epic card game, I am almost too tired to be sad.  But I am sad.   Sad to be leaving, but happy it happened.  I’ve already dreamt of our next trip.

(Taken from my journal of a family holiday trip to Raasay and Skye.  No holiday recap would be complete without a slideshow.  Just a few of my photos!)

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Nothing Says ‘I Love You’ Like WD-40

We went back to Glasgow last weekend to help Dad and Anne decorate their tree and see some friends.

The younger-than-us people sitting across from us on the train thought we were Mormon, because of Sarge’s beard.  We figured they meant Amish, but further figured they were too drunk to compare and contrast.  We arrived in Glasgow laughing and cold, with some doughnuts to test on my people.  The second batch looked more like doughnuts.  So much more that Sarge wanted me to get a picture of them.  I didn’t.

We got to the house and had doughnuts with eggnog.  And I actually got that warm feeling inside that meant the holidays had arrived in my heart and mind.   And maybe it meant I was a little tipsy, too.

We then decided to put the tree in the stand, and spent a lot of time and problem-solving skills trying to make it fit and not fall over.

‘If we wedge a door-stop in there, saw a bit off the end…’

Sarge volunteered to do the actual sawing, and ended up with a band-aid on his hand, after ‘grazing’ it.  I said his injury meant he had to repeat it next year.

For my part, I sat in the middle of the living room eating chocolate mints and saying, ‘No, it’s crooked…yes, it’s fine…no, it’s crooked again.’    I’m not the best person for the job.

When we went to bed, the tree was up.  Without decorations on it.  I wonder if naked Christmas trees will be a new family tradition.

The next morning, the gift I ordered for my Dad arrived.  Before we left, he asked to open it.

Glasgow Green on Saturday

On the way to meet friends at a coffee-shop, I took a picture of what the world looks like.  It’s one of my favourite shots of the year.

I then had hot chocolate at the coffee-shop and talked about the snow and other things with friends until it was time to get the train back to Edinburgh.  The train stopped, and we met friends at the pub, where I declared, ‘It’s too cold to snow tonight.’  I’m eating those words.

On Sunday, there was another snow dump on the way to the book-group.  Even though Invisible was my choice this month, all I remember saying at the meeting is, ‘I can’t feel my face.’

Sarge and I went to the shops after books and coffee and thawing out.  Christmas shopping that isn’t online might not be the best thing for even the strongest relationships.

‘Right, wanna break up?’ I asked.

‘WHAT?  No.’

I then realised what I’d said.

‘I meant, in the shop.  In the shop.  For shopping.  On second thought, let’s shop together.  Don’t go.’

I wanted to get something else for him in case the stuff I bought online and without misunderstandings didn’t arrive.  I told him to pick a DVD .  Because I didn’t want to break up in the shop.  Or  anywhere.  He picked something.  And his real gift arrived the next day.

That was the day my front wheels began to squeak and rebel against all the snow and salt they’ve had to contend with.  Beautiful and photogenic snow makes for angry wheels.

And Sarge came home with a can of WD-40, saying it was the least romantic gift he would ever give me.  It actually made me giddy.  Because nothing says ‘I love you’ like a can of WD-40.